


Raven

by mythicalamity



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Angst, Hauntober prompt, Heartbreak, M/M, Pining Rhett, Prompt Fic, Unhappy Ending, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27024172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythicalamity/pseuds/mythicalamity
Summary: This is a rhinkified take on Edgar Allan Poe’s poem ‘The Raven’. That is not a very hopeful narrative; neither is this💔
Relationships: Rhett McLaughlin/Link Neal
Comments: 9
Kudos: 12
Collections: Hauntober 2020





	Raven

It was just after midnight by the time Rhett got home from the wedding. He was utterly drained as he loosened his tie and tossed it across the room with the last of his strength. He felt like he was on autopilot as he clicked on the TV, and collapsed onto the sofa in his empty house. The energy that Rhett had poured into appearing happy for Link and his new bride had truly taken a toll. He curled up onto his sofa, and pulled a book into his lap. He had barely started reading when he felt the weight of the day guiding him toward sleep. However, he was startled from nodding off when he heard a noise at his front door. 

“Who in the hell…?” He openly wondered. It was way too late for a visitor. Some hopeful and near-buried part of him wondered if there was any universe where it might be Link. Maybe he’d realized that he made a mistake. Maybe he’d recognized the future he’d thrown away by marrying somebody else. But the realist in Rhett swallowed those hopes down again. It wasn’t gonna happen for them. Not in this lifetime. The day’s wedding festivities had made that more clear than ever. 

_Just some random visitor,_ Rhett thought to himself. He figured it had to be some drunk party guest looking to keep the party going. _Nothin’ more’n that._

Rhett sighed. Maybe some company would do him good. He clearly wasn’t doing very well on his own. His eyes traveled from his open book, and the background blue glow of the unwatched television. All distractions. All escapism. All just to try to get him through this slowly dying day, and shepherd him into the next. 

_And for what?_ He rhetorically asked himself. For a new day to start fresh and find new ways to distract himself from the love that he had held in his heart for so long, that he knew would never be returned to him. Well, that wasn’t exactly fair or true. Link did love him, and Rhett would never call that ‘nothing’. But as a brother. As a friend. _Nothin’ more’n that._

Rhett started to move toward the door when he was stopped in his tracks by the rustling of his curtains. The fluttering of the deep and somber purple silk adorning his window frame made Rhett jump. If he wasn’t so started, he might have felt silly at his age and his height, being startled by what surely must’ve been nothing but a little wind. Just a midnight… summer breeze, he told himself. _Nothin’ more’n that._

Silently reassuring himself that he would feel less jumpy if he had some company, he turned his attention back toward the presumed visitor on the other side of his front door. He tried to compose himself, and still his speeding pulse as he went to see who else might be needing company so late at night.

He began to greet his unannounced visitor before he’d even opened the door. “Sorry to leave you hangin’ out there! You caught me dozing off and I needed to get myself together, before..” He’d swung the door fully open, and looked all around his front porch. “Wasn’t even sure if I’d actually heard ya at first or if I was maybe….” Rhett’s voice trailed off, as he searched and searched and found nothing but the dark of night occupying the space outside his door. “...maybe ...dreaming?”

Rhett’s heart was beating quickly, and his stomach began to flutter with unease. 

“Hello? Was there someone out here? I know it took a sec for me to get to the door, but I…”

His dry, fatigued eyes burned from the weeks of restless sleep leading up to today’s nuptials. He scanned the shadowy stoop and found no one there, and no one answered his call. 

Rhett was beginning to wonder if he had, in fact, dreamed it. Or if his mind was slipping, sleep deprived and anxious as he’d been for so long. Dreading this day, and it’s passing. Now that it had passed, maybe this was some kind of emotional crash - playing tricks with his mind. 

In his heartache, Rhett whispered a single word into the darkness, “Link?” And a shrill murmur echoed back in the otherwise silent pitch black night, “Link!”

That sole syllable, and nothin’ more’n that. 

Rhett was paralyzed with fear and loneliness, staring off into the darkness. As he stared into nothingness, yearning took hold of his imagination as he fantasized that Link actually might abandon his new bride to make his way over to Rhett’s place to tell him... 

The cold night air breezed by his ear.

_“Link!”_

Rhett shivered and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he went back inside the house, his imagination aflame. No sooner than he’d secured the door behind him, Rhett heard a tapping sound outside… Somewhat louder than the first disturbance. 

Rhett’s heart had begun to race so quickly, he was starting to breathe heavier. _It’s just the wind,_ Rhett tried to convince himself. _Something caught in the lattice out there getting blown around. Nothin’ more’n that._

Rhett approached his window with trembling hands, he lifted his long fingers to the shutter and took a deep breath for courage before flinging it open. He immediately jumped back with a startled yelp as the intruder moved into his home.

A sleek-feathered raven flitted through his living room and perched itself upon a bookend on his shelf. It had handsome feathers that shone the color of midnight, with eyes so brightly black they almost had a blue tint. 

Rhett released all of his anguish and dread in a bark of a laugh, as he descended into belly laughs and giggles. He’d nearly had the crap scared outta him by a dang bird! 

“Well, hello there. Aren’t you a handsome fella? Come by to do a little late night reading? Yeah, I tried that mahself… Didn’t help much. What’s your name, little buddy?”

The raven squawked, and Rhett could have sworn he heard, “Nothin’ more!”

Rhett stared in disbelief at the ebon-winged creature on his bookend. 

“What’re the chances…” Rhett wondered aloud. A bird had landed on his bookshelf in the first place, and was now _speaking_ so… plainly. He tilted his head as he examined the stately bird with the funny name. 

“Nothin’ more!” The bird squawked again. Rhett began to suspect that was all the raven knew how to say. 

Rhett huffed, “Is that so? Listen here, Tweety. I’ve had midnight visitors like you before. Showing up all bright eyed and... darkly feathered. Come around talking about ‘nothin’ and making me believe it’s _somethin_. I predict you’ll be gone by morning, leaving me to think this whole magical night was somethin I just dreamed up and-“

“Nothin’ more!” The raven interrupted.

“Exactly…” Rhett said, the raven’s aptly spoken reply exacerbated the dark pit of emptiness deep in Rhett’s gut. Then he shook his head at the ridiculousness of his having a vulnerable conversation with a literal bird-brained conversation partner. A raven that only knew one phrase. “What kind of sorry sack did you live with before coming here to teach you only that one lonely and dismissive response?”

Rhett chuckled at the odd happenings there in his living room. But his laughter faded and a chill settled into his spine. He sat down into the edge of his sofa and stared at his curious and grim visitor. At this point Rhett felt it was more disturbing that such an ominous messenger bird would show up with no message, on this night where he was feeling such despair. It had to mean something, right? But what?

“What do you want from me, you creepy-ass bird? What do you mean by coming round at this hour and yammering on about ‘nothin more’?” Rhett demanded at his unphased guest. 

The bird did not respond to Rhett’s question, nor his name calling. It sat perched upon the book shelf, eyes seemingly aflame, burning into Rhett’s chest, scalding his already aching core. 

Rhett had to avert his eyes from the raven’s gaze. The intensity was just fuel to the fire of his preexisting pain, as he processed and began to force himself to come to terms with the fact that the odds of this foreboding raven landing in his living room and speaking a word or two at him had actually been far more likely than the possibility that Link would walk through his door... or window, as the raven would have it. 

Never again would Link show up at Rhett’s house desperate and wanting; eyes blazing and penetrating as fiery as the raven’s eyes were now. Link searching for his own answers, and managing to use even fewer words than the raven had. They never needed words in those moments. It was all understood, as they would work out their questions with fingers and lips. Hands and mouths. Their bodies communicating their needs far better than any language they’d been taught had prepared them to do. 

But Rhett knew now that those explorations, and carnal ‘conversations’ were over. That had been it. All there was between them had ended. 

“Nothin more!” The raven added cruelly. 

The air hung heavy between Rhett and the raven. Tension dark and thick as rage built within Rhett. 

“So what’s the point of you anyway?” Rhett demanded. “Are you just here to torture and taunt? Don’t you at least have some kinda mystical powers or somethin? Some way to help me…” Rhett’s voice broke as he futilely interrogated his detached and disinterested dark-winged companion. “...help me forget?”

“Nothin more!”

“Then you’re nothin but cruel and evil coming here to torture me!” Rhett’s long-repressed emotion bubbled to the surface and exploded into the air between himself and the bird. “You think I haven’t suffered enough tonight? Can’t you give me any kind of hope or healing, or even just… numbing? If you’re not here to help me, what good are ya? Why were you sent to me tonight?”

Rhett’s dry, tired eyes began to sting as the tears that he’d been holding back prickled for the surface. 

“Why are you here?” Rhett croaked, in a strained and barely audible voice. 

“Nothin more!”

“Aren’t raven’s prophets of death?”

The bird cocked its head quizzically. 

“Maybe you’re here to let me know that at least, in death… maybe then Link and I can be together, like we were… before…”

“Nothin more!”

Rhett sniffled back his tears. “Not that I’m in any hurry for either of us to get there. But it would be nice to know that since it’s not lookin like it’s gonna happen again in this world, that maybe in the next one… Is… is that why you’re here? To give me that hope from… beyond? Maybe you’re not so evil after all. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Feathers. It’s a grim message, and life is long and… potentially lonely. Without… _him_. But it won’t last forever. And if you’re here to tell me…”

Rhett’s own remaining vestiges of sleepless sanity wouldn’t let him continue. 

“Nothin more!” The raven predictably responded. 

Rhett wasn’t sure what else he’d expected the bird to say, evident as it had become that it was incapable of saying anything else. But as the raven uttered its sole catchphrase, it now struck Rhett like a beak plunged directly into his aching heart. 

“I think I’ve had about enough of you,” Rhett told the raven. Rhett’s tone was rising into his fragile chest and his voice was coming out in an uncharacteristically shrill shriek. “Get outta my house, and take all your hopelessness and dark shit with you! Don’t leave a single feather behind, and don’t let the shutter hit you on your way out!”

“Nothin more!”

Rhett didn’t know why he was surprised by the raven’s cold response. He shouldn’t have been at this point. But in that moment, all the warmth seemed to leave Rhett’s bones. 

The raven did not move, despite Rhett’s wild plea for it to do so. It sat still on the book shelf, it’s eyes reflecting the dim lamp light like tiny fires in its demonic eyes, a wicked shadow cast over everything in Rhett’s eyeline. 

Rhett felt his own soul bleed out and become swallowed up by the looming darkness of the raven, devouring all light and love and hope. Leaving Rhett broken and chilled, with no company apart from his feelings of endless loneliness, disappointment, sorrow and—nothin more!


End file.
